Journey to Recovery from Childhood Abuse

Feeling Completely Loved

I have shared a few times that I am working through a Beth Moore Bible study entitled Breaking Free. In this blog entry, I shared that I had trouble answering the question: “Who is someone you are absolutely certain loves you?” That question made me cry because, even though I know in my head that a lot of people love me, I am not “absolutely certain” about any of them. Many of you wrote some sweet comments to me on that post. :0)

This week’s topic of the Bible study has focused upon God’s unfailing love. It did swing around to thinking about someone who you are “absolutely certain” loves you again, but I was in a better place emotionally and chose my son. What I found much more helpful was writing a list of characteristics of a child who feels loved versus a child who does not. That one was easy – I just thought about myself versus my son. It was night and day!

It is no wonder that I struggle with feeling “absolutely certain” that anyone loves me. It is a mother’s job to instill confidence in feeling loved in her newborn baby, and my mother failed miserably. While there are certainly other influences in a child’s life, that very first bond between mother and baby lays the foundation for feeling loved or unloved for the rest of your life. When you do not believe that your own mother loves you (whether that is true or not), it sets the child up for feeling unloved in every other relationship.

Here’s the good part for anyone with a faith – The focus of the Bible study this week was on God’s unfailing love and that He loves me to pieces. He is the only One who knows everything that I have been through (even the memories I have yet to recover) and fully understands why I am the way that I am. If I could truly believe and embrace that God loves me this deeply, I believe it will go a long way toward repairing the shattered foundation that my mother left me.

The truth is that I do have people in my life who love me deeply. However, I have trouble receiving or believing that love, in part because all of them are human and have failed me from time to time due to their own limitations. Also, I feel like a great resource rather than someone who is loved. I am the “go-to” person for many things, which makes me feel like I am appreciated for what I do rather than loved for who I am. I have been caught in this loop for my entire life, never truly believing that I am loved.

I am going to try to apply what I have learned in this Bible study and “pray in my unbelief” to believe that God truly loves me to pieces. Feeling someone else’s love penetrate all of those empty places inside would go a very long way toward healing my brokenness. Also, if I was confident that somebody truly knew and loved me, then I would finally believe that I was lovable and might be more open to receiving love from those in my life who do love me.

Does anyone else struggle with feeling fundamentally unlovable? Do you think your faith might be the answer?

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7 Responses

“Do you think your faith might be the answer?” Yes you certainly are. Sorry I could not resist. There is truth to that yes you are the answer.

I am a fixer a go to guy. You know what I am finding? Those that love me want to express my love in a different way.

I am such a fixer and go to guy that is how I make money.

I use the term spirituality which can certainly can be affected by practicing a faith. Practicing a faith can also be a distraction from spirituality. It depends on what the person brings to it.

7 years ago one told our therapist. I know how to love I do not know how to be loved. I feel loving is natural to those who are not evil knowing how to be loved is learned through experience just as learning how not to be loved is learned through experience.

“Being appreciated for what I do, rather than loved for who I am” That feels very familiar to me!

You may also find Marianne Wiliamson’s books very helpful. They have a based in Christianity (A Course in Miracles), but many of the Bible interpretations differ from the traditional Fire and Brimstone… I find them comforting.
Peace,
mia

I think it’s easy to feel unloved when one is completely willing to give their all for others, and realizing that for the most part, others aren’t ready to go that far for you. Mostly because you keep giving your all to people who don’t deserve it. And those people that don’t deserve your all make you feel it’s because there is something wrong with you that makes you worthless. And then you start believing what you feel…

And this feeling somehow got applied to my relationship with God.
When I finally saw I was doing this -imagining that God couldn’t acutally love me that much- and stopped it, I felt a lot better about being me. Because God does love me, and He loves you, and He loves all of His children.
Still working on this BTW…

In short, yes. Absolutely yes, the fight with feelings of being fundamentally worthless or unlovable, for me at least, stemmed from not believing God loved me either, but He does.
This is why you shouldn’t allow your feelings to guide your spiritual beliefs too far. Because things we feel aren’t always (or usually in my case) the truth. Especially since we’ve had our minds twisted in such a way that makes us constantly *feel* so many things that are wrong about ourselves and others.

I think only the love of our higher power / God / Goddess even CAN be perfect and unconditional. Most, perhaps all, people love us in part for what we do and in part for what they know of who we are, it’s always a bit conditional, even in the best of cases. This seems normal to me. And even the love of God / Goddess has it’s own quirks, like how child abuse is permitted by a powerful being. I’ve come to my own peace with that, but it’s a hard one. The good thing is I believe God/ess also understand and can accept and love us despite our anger with him/her/it. I think though, that allowing oneself to feel loved by our higher power / God / Goddess is a big part of allowing love in in general. Knowing that someone sees it all and loves me anyway, is in itself very healing, and has come to feel true to me, that I have nothing to be ashamed of provided I live my conscience to the best of my ability, and the abuse had nothing that touches on that.

I believe in reincarnation, and I believe that we choose our life experiences ahead of time. I believe that I chose such as difficult life as a way to refine myself as well as to help others heal. From my human perspective, choosing this horrible childhood sounds really stupid, but from a spiritual perspective, this one lifetime is a drop in the bucket of eternity and worth the short-term pain for the eternal good.

So, I do not believe that God/Goddess “chose” or “allowed” the abuse. I think it was part of a plan that I, myself, agreed to. I also believe that God/Goddess’ love is truly unfailing without quirks and that the plan for my life is always for the greatest good. In this lifetime, it is in my own greatest good to “prove” (for lack of a better word) that the compassion I learned in former lifetimes remains even when tested to the limits. It is in the greatest good of others to help them heal.

This perspective might not be helpful for many people, but it has been amazingly helpful for me. If God/Goddess “chose” this path for me against my will, I am not sure I could get past it. However, for it to be my own choice and for a higher purpose, I can see the greater good and feel very loved.

On a completely different note, I typically refer to God as a “he” because of my Christian background, but I do not believe that God has a gender. I think He is all-encompassing with a very strong masculine AND feminine side, so either reference is completely appropriate. (I know that most Christians would disagree with me.) Just my own two cents. :0)

Yes, I do struggle with feeling fundamentally unloveable. Feeling like I am appreciated for what I do, not loved for who I am. Afraid that if I do not measure up, I will be rejected. If I stop performing, I will be of no use to anyone.

I do hope my faith in God is the answer. It can be hard to believe sometimes, though…when I just don’t feel it. Right now, I don’t know if I know how to accept love. I don’t know if I trust it. I don’t trust anyone to stay…I’m in college and it feels like people just leave right and left, and I know it has nothing to do with me, but it hurts.

I think I will have to mention this Beth Moore study to my roommate/RA. Our hall theme this year is “From Bondage to Victory.”

Thank you so much for your blog. It is a very real comfort to me. It is a safe place where I feel understood and not so alone.